Alvin Lee's Ten Years Later - Rockpalast Live

If you're part of the extremely small coterie of fans who still remember Alvin Lee and his monotonous heavy-blues band, Ten Years After, then the appeal of this concert video needs no explanation. If, however, you're either too young to remember Lee (whose charismatic turn in the Woodstock film made him more of a star than his derivative music ever would have), or you are old enough to remember him but couldn't care less what he's been up to, the lure of this tape may be somewhat more obscure. Lee (looking distinctly chunkier and more wasted than in his youth) was a rock-blues guitarist-singer whose main claim to fame was a speedy set of fingers (not to be confused with actually being a great guitarist). He's joined here by an undistinguished bassist and drummer for an hour of retrograde blues bashing, featuring his trademark scat singing and interpolation of better songs into his own hackneyed tunes. Filmed at a club in Germany, this is a video that seemingly pinpoints where music from the late 1960s went to die. --Marshall Fine